


Can I hold your hand?

by Guy_Fleegman



Category: The Ruins (2008), The Ruins - Scott Smith
Genre: Conversation, Extra Scene, From the book, Gen or Pre-Slash, hand holding, mention of injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23715565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guy_Fleegman/pseuds/Guy_Fleegman
Summary: Amy and Eric's conversation in the mine expanded.
Kudos: 2





	Can I hold your hand?

Their hands bumped into each other. Eric shifted away, not wanting to crowd her, Amy assumed. The few inches of air he moved from were still warm with his body heat, but that too would chill. She’d hoped she wouldn’t have to say it, that he would be able to read her mind, or better, wanted to hold her hand too. Not hers specifically—just someone’s.

“It’s dark down here,” she said. Then, feeling the need to prove her statement, said, “I mean, I can’t even see you and you’re like right beside me.” She blinked hard, staring where she knew him to be.

Eric shifted again. “I thought my eyes would adjust, but they haven’t.”

Amy sighed, not responding. She’d have to say it, and something inside her chest was telling her to do so quickly, like she wouldn’t have time later. She closed her eyes, hand resting palm up on her knee.

“I’m not scared, but can you hold my hand?”

“Alright,” he said softly, almost a whisper.

She started when his cold skin touched hers. His hand was heavy and solid, her fingers curling on instinct around his, not tangling together like her and Jeff, but neatly around. That something in her chest abated, falling back in the shadows, sure to resurface later when she was alone. She was safe now though—safe with Eric. When she got back to the others, she’d be safe with Jeff and Stacy too. Even Mathias or…

“How’s your leg?” she asked, futilely turning her eyes to him. She almost convinced herself she saw the brim of his hat, catching whatever light fell in with them, but remembered he wasn’t wearing it anymore. She couldn’t get away too long with lying to herself. 

“Hurts when I’m on it,” he said. “But I think it’s done bleeding.” She imagined him tilting his foot side to side, testing the pain. “Sorry, by the way.” He opened the hand she was holding and then closed it again.

At first, she thought he was apologizing for them being down there in the dark, sitting on the rough ground that still smelt like Pablo. Then, maybe, about their whole situation. It was the dampness between their hands that made her realize he meant about the blood. _His_ blood.

“That’s a good sign,” she said, forcing confidence into her voice. “That the bleeding stopped. You’ll be alright. Just watch, you’ll have an awesome scar and a badass story behind it.”

She could hear the smile when he responded. “I’ll give a different story to every student who asks about it. It’ll take on a life of its own, kids passing their story to each other, each version crazier than the last.”

Amy smiled, didn’t respond for a moment, and silence threatened them.

“My tongue feels like cotton,” Eric said, clicking his tongue once, twice. Amy mimicked the movement, noting how dry her mouth was. “Do you think Jeff’ll make us drink our urine?”

Amy actually laughed at that, shaking her head at such an idea. No, she thought, they wouldn’t be here nearly long enough for that. That was something people did when they were going to be _stuck_ somewhere. Even if they were going to be here longer than expected…

“It’ll rain,” she said. “It’ll rain so much we’ll be able to shower in it.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

She pictured placing a bowl in the middle of the clearing and stepping back, hands on her hips, watching the water rise. It would rain like that every day, she told herself. They’d have so much water they wouldn’t know what to do with it. Her and Stacy would soak their feet in it. The boys would shave with it. It didn’t matter that they didn’t have a bowl, they would think of something like that. Jeff would think of something.

“You think those other Greeks will come tomorrow?” Of course, Eric would ask that. Bring up the Greeks—Pablo’s friends—when Amy was starting to feel like it would be fine.

“Of course,” she said. “They’ll be here tomorrow.” She wasn’t so sure of that, but waited for Eric to agree. That had helped with the water issue, it would help here. “Don’t you think?”

“Probably.”

Their words wouldn’t change whether it happened or not, she knew, but it felt like they could. That if they’d said, out loud, that nobody was coming, it would make it true. That merely saying the Greeks would come, made it a psychical impossibility for them not to. She knew—of course, she _knew_ —that this was utter bullshit. It didn’t matter much though.

“You think we could sneak by?” She asked, covering her bases with speaking all possibilities into existence. If she spoke it, it was real. “Or signal a plane?”

He squeezed her hand. “I wouldn’t be fast enough to get past those bastards, but I bet Jeff or Mathias could. You seen the legs on that German?”

Amy was happy to smile again. “You think he’s hot?”

There was a thud, Eric slapping his chest presumably, ever the actor. “Amy, I have a girlfriend. She’s right up there.” He spoke with fake offence, and Amy was glad he was down there with her.

“Maybe the natives will just wander off,” she said, craning her neck to look up, hoping it would help her hear what was happening up there. “Maybe they’ll get bored.”

This idea, she decided, seemed most unlikely and most likely at the same time. Why would they waste their time keeping a few strangers on a hill? It didn’t make sense. But this wasn’t a normal hill. Amy didn’t know why she thought this, but it felt like a correct assessment.

“Alright,” Eric said, voice stronger. “When these bastards wander away to go grow corn, and we catch a bus on the road, and we’re back at the hotel: what’s the first thing you’re gonna do?”

Finally, a question she was certain the answer of. “Shower. Get all this sweat and grime and…” she stopped short of saying blood. It felt like a serious word. “Get clean and then sleep for a week.”

Wiggling her toes, remembering what clean toes felt like, made her feet feel dirtier than they had a few minutes ago. Her feet were gross and so were her legs, and her arms, and her face. She really wanted a shower.

“Interesting choice,” Eric said, and his voice made Amy picture how dirty he was too. A brief, reflexive thought of pulling her hand away from his, fluttered through her head. But then she wouldn’t be safe. And, she added, neither would he. “I’d say eating would be top priority though. We’d be dirty, yeah, but that wouldn’t make us dizzy.”

Her stomach growled, trying to digest Eric’s imaginary meal.

“Shit,” Amy said. “Why not just start with some beer?”

Eric snapped his fingers. “Bingo! We have a winner.”

Amy figured Eric was at the same place as her—the hotel restaurant, sweating beer in hand, waiter bringing hot food, their clean hair swaying in the breeze. For a quick moment, the time it took to exhale, Amy was happy.

The cold, hollow air from the blackness beside them brushed across her skin, and she was back in the mine. The restaurant melted, becoming misshapen and sad before it left.

“I’m sorry,” Eric said again. This time she knew what he was apologizing for immediately. Getting her hopes up; taking her to the restaurant only for it to melt.

“I’m glad you’re the one down here,” she said. He wouldn’t have been her first choice, or even second, but neither Jeff nor Stacy would apologize for that. They wouldn’t understand the deep absence she felt when it disappeared. They wouldn’t apologize for giving her hope.

“It was brave of you to come down here.”

She didn’t say that the decision was made for her. She didn’t say that it only could have been her. She didn’t say that what he did was brave and what she did was cowardice. She was down there because Jeff told her to be, and she couldn’t tell him no.

“Thanks,” she said, squeezing his hand.

It wasn’t long before Jeff and Mathias were back, shouting down at them. Then she was being pulled up, and Eric followed. She was happy to be back with everyone, out of that darkness, her arms around Jeff. But as events progressed and escalated and she was forced to look at their situation head on, she found her mind wandering back to her and Eric in the mine.

She hadn’t felt alone then. She felt alone now.

**Author's Note:**

> I know, right?


End file.
